'Derangement' Is One Wild Ride Into Political Insanity

May 25, 2008|By STEVE WEINBERG; Special to The Courant

In "The Great Derangement," a book of high-octane journalism, Rolling Stone magazine writer Matt Taibbi swings from irony to cynicism to profanity to disarming humor, then cycles back as he argues that politicians are duping the citizenry - when members of the citizenry are not too occupied duping themselves.

Taibbi travels broadly. In alternating chapters, he embeds himself with a military unit fighting in Iraq, the press gallery of the U.S. Congress, a born-again Christian church and a cell of the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement consisting of conspiracy theorists who seem interested in almost everything but the truth.

The titles of Taibbi's earlier books suggest he is not subtle and does not care whom he offends: "Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches From the Dumb Season" and "Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches From a Rotting Empire." Then consider this passage in the introduction, in the context of 9/11 terrorists getting away with mass murder:

"America turned out to be, in a way, psychologically immune to attack; its government was too corrupt to fight back, and its people were too crazy to comprehend their position in the world. We were a nation gone completely mad, blind to everything outside our borders, with our effective institutions co-opted by crooks and thieves and our citizens piddling away the last days of their influence reading sacred tracts and spinning absurd theories about the grassy knoll, WTC 7 and the international Masonic conspiracy."

As he becomes a fly on the wall - sometimes openly as a journalist, sometimes under cover of a false identity - he occasionally feels remorse about spying on individuals or groups he fails to respect on intellectual or public policy grounds.

But, as deaths in unpopular wars mount, as the U.S. government descends into corruption and ineffectuality, he cannot help himself. He pillories the craziness of some born-again Christians and 9/11 conspiracy theorists, acutely observing that despite the differences of the movements, they are strikingly similar.

"Both groups were and are defined primarily by an unshakable belief in the inhumanity of their enemies on the other side; the Christians seldom distinguished between Islamic terrorism and, say, Al Gore-style environmentalism, while the Truthers easily believed that reporters for the Washington Post, the president and the frontline operators of NORAD were equally capable of murdering masses of ordinary New York financial sector employees."

He does not spare himself harsh words and harsher conclusions. Such self-deprecation is sure to buy him empathy from some readers. It might wear thin, however, as the insults buzz off the page.

During this campaign of outrageous electoral politics, Taibbi's voice is unique. That is no guarantee of quality, but quality is in the mind of the beholder; Taibbi will quite likely penetrate lots of those minds.

Thoughtful Democrats, Republicans, independents and those who eschew suffrage ought to find a modicum of common ground in a book that punctures pretense, hypocrisy and know-nothingness.

Steve Weinberg's new book is "Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller."